Another Victim: Red-tailed Hawk Dies from Rodenticide Poisoning in Stratham, NH

A Red-tailed Hawk from Stratham, NH brought to wildlife rehabilitator Maria Colby, was so severely compromised that he had to be euthanized.

The hawk was hemorrhaging internally and showed visible bleeding in the pupil, a telling sign.

A hematocrit test confirmed that the hawk's hematocrit level — the measure of red blood cells in the blood — was critically low.

​​For a Red-tailed Hawk, a normal range is between 30% and 50%. This victim's reading was 10: the blood had lost its ability to clot, and the bird was bleeding to death from the inside.

This is what rodenticide poisoning looks like.